


Raining Fire

by Skeren



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Imprisonment, M/M, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:30:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5906119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The military found out about Roy's efforts before Maes could make him stop. It changed many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raining Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written June 2005.

He knew that once he might have been called useless in the rain. He never had been of course, it was just that flint didn’t strike when wet. That meant that snapping wasn’t all that efficient. It…

Once, before Ishbal, and war, and the things that went bump in the night, he’d experimented with water. Yes, it could put a normal fire out, but water had never been something he’d looked at as an obstacle. It was easier to make fire from water than it was to make it from air, but he knew that many didn’t realize this, assuming it was otherwise or that the idea had never occurred to him. He couldn’t very well have showed anyone that this wasn’t the case in recent years. 

He didn’t have his gloves anymore. He’d lost those long before, when they’d stepped in to stop his transmutations. To stop the efforts that he’d been putting into bringing people back after the war. It might have been different, he knew, if someone had been there to stop him earlier, before he’d been caught. No one had been. There had been an accident in the city, and his closest friend had been distracted with his need to stay with his girlfriend. Roy had never even known he was on his way the day it happened.

He hadn’t been killed when they’d discovered the trespass. No, instead he’d been locked away. It had been rather funny in the headlines if he understood it correctly. Hero of the war turned renegade lawbreaker. Nobody had been willing to let him see a paper for himself to check though.

That too, was long in the past, however. They’d tried to get him to do things he would never agree to, but that he found himself viewing, as the months turned to years, not so much as immoral but as a waste of time and resources. They knew he was dangerous, but not enough that he should have any special treatment. Not like the other alchemist that had already been there a year and was shoved off into the confinement of the dark. The one he didn’t even know was still alive.

Not at first anyway.

A bit of blood on the wall and a stolen lighter had quickly changed the standard of how he was treated, and for months after that the closest he got to freedom was leaning on the wall beside the door of his cell. He’d spent many days just tracing his finger over his leg in the well-remembered pattern that had adorned his gloves, listening to the silence. He always did it in the same spot, and after a few weeks of the treatment, it had started to show on his skin. After a few months of the same, the marks had stood out as a livid red. After a little over a year, it became obvious that they weren’t ever going to come off again, not once he’d started running his nail over the already tender skin.

There were many ways to go crazy. He’d been set upon with more than one. First was that pit of despair… then they sent him into a lonely indifference, in which he slowly started to rationalize his choices. Where he started to see ‘the larger picture’ as it were. He refound his love of his alchemy there, during the time he couldn’t use it. The stone wasn’t malleable enough for arrays, and the one he had created… well, he had no way to start off a spark. But, during the long hours of darkness, he’d learned not to hate what he could do for what he had done.

It wasn’t until a few years later that he was shaken from the solitude. The guards had assembled the prisoners, a decent portion at least, in a room that had fairly pulsed with power. He had no way to use it, but he wasn’t the only one there that could. He hadn’t seen Crimson in a very long time. Had thought him long executed in fact.

It seemed that there were many misconceptions floating around that he hadn’t been aware of.

For a few minutes, it was as though they’d never stepped off the battlefield. Once the explosion was set off, one that the gold eyed alchemist had clearly enjoyed, he has stepped in, rebounding the spark of the explosion again and again until there was a clear path out, the smoke too thick for the guards to properly contain the prisoners. The teamwork had been flawless, and only a flicker of surprise had lit golden eyes before a wicked grin had replaced it.

They’d met up with others during the explosions that had followed, some of whom the dark-eyed alchemist had seen before, in cages to be changed. They were the chimeras that he’d refused to help create, led by one figure that he didn’t know at all. It wasn’t a priority at that point, escaping being much higher on the list for all of them that day. 

Now, three days after the flight from the lab, not the prison at all as he’d once thought, it was raining. Staring into the fall of water for long moments, he decided something and turned to step inside, quickly finding the other alchemist sitting off by himself, watching the others instead of speaking with them. 

“Kimbley.”

“Mustang.”

Tipping his head back towards the door, he reached over and collected the lighter that Dorchette had left with his tobacco. “I’ve something to show you.”

“I can see that it’s raining just fine from here.” 

Rolling his eyes at the rather flat reply, the smaller man grabbed the other alchemist by the wrist and pulled him along with him, completely ignoring the growl the manhandling earned him. “No, I’ve something to show you.” Releasing him just before the warning that had been made clear could become a reality, he stepped out under the overhang. Checking to be sure that the other wasn’t leaving, he smiled secretively to himself. “Now watch.”

Fingers flicking the flint of the lighter, Roy stepped out into the rain, eyes closed, and set off the reaction, the trick he’d learned such a long time before. This was why he’d once hated the rain, during that time when he’d hated himself and what he could do. 

The act of making it rain fire, after all, could only be destructive couldn’t it? Hearing the catch of breath from the other alchemist, his secretive smile grew serene. No, it was as he had once thought, before the war… it could be beautiful as well.

He’d never been useless in the rain. Only afraid. He wasn’t anymore though. How could he be when he finally understood?

This was how he was meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone even drew art for it, which I colored and posted with permission. I no longer have contact with the original artist, unfortunately.  
> 


End file.
